


This New Thing

by willowoak_walker



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Hieron Universe, M/M, Season: Spring in Hieron
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-07 15:54:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16411472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowoak_walker/pseuds/willowoak_walker
Summary: Fero makes new things.Somehow, it means even more to Samol than he'd expected.





	This New Thing

The first time it works it’s the sea-squirrels.

 

   Then Fero sits and thinks for a long time, doodling in the dry soil outside Samot’s tower. People tend not to think he’s a thoughtful person, but this is his type of thing. This is his  _ thing _ . Seeing how things fit together, forming the system of life, and the holes in it that are his fault -- he’s edged around that thought for so much longer than the sand. 

He can’t make old things again. He  _ won’t _ . Old things aren’t  _ better  _ things.  _ New  _ things, things that never were. Fero can do something with that. Can maybe -- Samol talked about how the sea-squirrels feed the porpoises. And they need to eat something, too. Samol made a seanut for them. A new plant.

   Samol’s not … not strong enough for new plants to be easy for him. Fero needs to make an animal that eats plants that exist. Or one that eats animals, but first it needs to have animals to eat. So something that eats plants that exist. But not a plant that is fragile and will be just all eaten up, it needs to be a weed, it --

   Something that eats poison ivy! Something like… a cricket, but not a cricket. A poison cricket? If it eats mostly poison ivy, then it’ll be poison ivy poisonous.

   What about … a red one, with spines all along its back. So things know not to eat it.

   That doesn’t work.

   A beetle? No, spiny beetles exist. What if a … a cricket, but on its back legs. With its front legs hanging down and touching each other like its gonna punch something.

   Woops, forgot to make it eat poison ivy. But hey! It worked.

   Okay, okay. Trying again.

 

   If you make insects too big they just explode. Or collapse.

   What if Fero put plates like insect-armor on the back of a warm-blooded animal?

   No, not like that.

   Okay, more like … that? Oops.

   What about … that. No,

   How about… ha!

   It still doesn’t eat poison ivy, though.

 

   All right. From the top. To eat poison ivy it needs to make poison ivy into something in its body and it needs chewing teeth and it needs to be big enough that it can actually do the munching so what if it’s like …

   Oh hey this is really cool!

 

   “Samol! Samol! I’m a snake! A snake that eats poison ivy!”

 

   The boy — the Druid, Severea and Galenica’s boy — slithers up to him all bright eyes and brand-new nature.

   He’s better at it than Samol expected. This is the third New Thing in the past two weeks. There are nests of little upright crickets sneaking out on warmer days and trundling plated beasts like over-sized rabbits wandering around and munching on them and any other insects they can find through the snow. Stubborn little buggers.

   And now there are snakes eating plants and…

   Samol just has to pick the boy up and laugh at him, drape Fero over his shoulders like a scarf with scales.

   “Well, my, my, that sure is a thing that never existed before, boy,” Samol says, rubbing his fingers over the scaley head that Fero’s made for himself.

   Fero squirms over Samol's shoulders, making a smooth transformation from scales to fur and growing legs. Eight of them, and now there’s a beast like a cross between a snake and a caterpillar and a weasel draped around his person-neck, and others popping into existence all around his land-body. One or two of them go crawling onto the star-stuff. 

They vanish from him, like everything damnfool enough to do that does. But Fero’d tried to talk to the stars, and these things take after their creator. Ferrets, ha!

One crawls from the starstuff back onto him, and Heiron’s knees buckle with the sudden reconnection with something that was there and wasn’t there and is again, and he holds onto the boy like his grandson hung onto that little bear-thing his father gave him. They just keep doing it, these little ferrets, climbing onto and off of him, like the stars are just a funny kind of rock.

   “Samol?”

   Fero’s a halfling again, holding Heiron’s shoulders as he shakes. He’s a good boy.

   “I like them,” Samol says, “Boy, these new things you’re making, I do enjoy them.”

   “You like them so much you fell over?” Fero sits Samol down again, leaning him up against the tree, brushing the back of his hand against Ordenna in the process. It’s still a strange feeling, even after all these years. His dirt drags onto the stars, and it’s like the opposite of getting a splinter, somehow. Ferrets make little mud nests in the corners of the stars, and it’s  _ Heiron _ , there where it shouldn’t be.

   “That newest one, the ferret — that scarf-caterpillar — it touched the stars and came back down. It left me, and it came back home.” It’s beyond words, and Heiron’s stretching out beyond mortal timescales with the  _ strangeness _ of it.

   “That’s neat,” Fero says, settling down next to him. Boy’s good at waiting, somehow. Opinionated damnfool reckless child who can wait for a bird to move from its nest with all the patience of Galen-- with the patience of an ornithologist. If he needed to eat he’d still forget. 

   “Boy, I do not think you understand how neat that is,” Samol says. “You’ve done more than I dared hope.”

   “Ha,” Fero says. He leans against Samol’s side, and Samol wraps an arm around his shoulders. “Told you I was awesome.”

   “You sure did,” Samol says, and presses a kiss to the top of his head. “This is a new _ kind _ of new thing.”

“The stars are an old kind of new thing that broke,” Fero says, snuggling in, “Should I make more things like that? That think the stars are just a thing?” Samol nods. He’s shaking, a little. “I’m not sure how I did it,” Fero admits. 

“Well, even if you never do it again, it’s a thing I am glad of,” Samol says. Maybe it’s not like the opposite of getting a splinter. It might be the opposite of getting  _ Ordenna _ instead. 

_ That’s _ one new thing he’s not keen on repeating. He tugs Fero a little closer, and the boy squirms around, ends up backwards of where Samol intended, facing him on his lap. “Hello, boy,” Samol says. His lips twitch up at the edges without his planning. 

Well.

   “You missed,” Fero says, and kisses him. Samol kisses him back, gentle for his mortality.

“I missed?”

“You kissed my hair,” Fero says. “That’s not where I want you to kiss me.”

“Well, all right,” Samol says, and kisses his mouth. Fero pushes him back up against the tree and Samol slides his hand into Fero’s hair between the leaves and twigs. “That where you want me to kiss you?”

“I want you to kiss me everywhere,” Fero says. “But that’s a start.”

 


End file.
